Sociology & Anthropology

Melissa Johnson

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Areas of expertise
Topical: Environment; Conservation; Development; Race and Racism; Social Theory; Environmental History; Tourism; Gender. Area: Belize; Caribbean; U.S.-Mexico Borderlands; Central Texas

Dr. Johnson is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in environmental anthropology, race and gender.  She focuses her research on Belize's Afro-Caribbean populations. Currently, she is working on a book manuscript, Naturally Creole, on nature, community and identity in rural Belizean Creole communities. She has also published on the intersections of race and environment in the history of Belize, and has projects underway on ecotourism; gender and development; garbage; and hunting and migration.  She has conducted an interdisciplinary faculty-studyent collaborative project on environmental justice in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and is currently working with student Kimberly Griffin (Env Studies '10) on a social and environmental history of the San Gabriel River in Central Texas.

Dr. Johnson is involved with the SU Diversity Enrichment Committee, the Environmental Studies program and the Feminist Studies Program.


Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan 1998
B.A., Williams College 1984

Positions

Associate Professor of Anthropology
Southwestern University
August 01, 2004 - present

Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Southwestern University
August 01, 2006 - present

Assistant Professor of Anthropoogy
Southwestern University
August 01, 1998 - July 01, 2004

Courses: Fall 2009

Intro to Anthropology
Global Environmental Justice
Academic Internship
Paideia Seminar 1A
Independent Study
Independent Study

Research

Summer 2009 conducting historical research on the San Gabriel River in Williamson County, focusing on environmental and social changes as they manifest themselves in people's relationship to the River.

Between 1990 and the present--long term ethnographic and historical research on the rural Belizean Creole communities of the Belize River Valley, and Crooked Tree Lagoon areas.

2002 - 2003 Conducted ethnographic research, supervised undergraduate anthropological research, and participated in an interdisciplinary team on questions of environmental justice and the meaning of landscapes on the U.S.-Mexico border at Matamoros, Mexico.


Publications

(with Emily Niemeyer) Ambivalent Landscapes: Environmental Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands  Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal  36 (3): 371-382.  2008.

Racing Nature and Naturalizing Race: Rethinking the Nature of Creole and Garifuna Communities Belizean Studies, Special Issue: Colonialism and Nature in Belize (ed Joel Wainwright) 27(2/November): 43-56. 2005.

The Making of Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century British Honduras, Environmental History 8(4): 598-617. 2003


Honors & Awards

Joe S. Mundy Award for Exemplary Service, 2009

Southwestern University Senior Teaching Award, 2006.

Fulbright Grant for dissertation research in Belize, 1993-1994

Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship, for dissertation research in Belize, January 1993 - October 1994.

Inter-American Foundation Field Research Doctoral Fellowship, for dissertation research in Belize, January 1993 - October 1994.